Why doesn’t someone point out that the earth is a bubble. Where is the water going to come from to ‘raise the ocean levels’. The bit that hte poles represent would not raise the TOTAL SURFACE AREA OF THE EARTH, IF THEY WEE MELTED COMPLETELY.

I’m not a warming alarmist, but it’s pretty clear from the physics that the complete melting of the polar ice caps would raise sea levels appreciably – but not if it is the ice cap that the Warming Chicken Littles are focused on… which, in a display of egocentrism that typifies their psychotypes, is the ice cap nearest them – which means the Arctic, because they’re mostly Yanks and Europeans.

Best guess is that if Antarctica melted, the sea level would rise 61 metres (the ice there is sitting mostly on a firm geological base and has no contact with the sea). Still, that’s not a concern because it’s never going to happen (the mean annual temp there is -37℃ and it never gets above about -15℃).

De-icing Greenland would raise sea levels 7 metres (again, the ice is supported by a land mass); that’s not going to happen unless the Earth warms another several degrees (in which case, life will be way better).

Oddly enough, de-icing the Arctic would have no impact because almost all of the sheet ice in the Arctic is actually floating on the sea surface: think of an ice cube – when it melts, does the liquid level in your glass rise, or fall? Answer: if it’s a glass of water, the level is unchanged.

The key is whether the existing ice is in the sea or is supported from underneath (as in Greenland and the Antarctic). Using the ice cube in a drink example: Antarctic melting would be like putting a big-ass ice cube in the ocean (sea levels would rise); Arctic melting is like watching an ice cube melt that’s already in the drink… it’s boring and the result is “meh”.